Shakespearean Tales

Then, all of a sudden, came the realisation that a pendulum governs “the hermeneutics of the tempest“, swinging the plot in the whereabouts of the comedy or the tragedy, determined by where the plot decides to swing away. Not any pendulum in this choice, yet the one Foucault intended, to manifest Earth has a motus of its own.

Colombian director Omar Porras` choice for his mise en scène “gravitates“ – this must be the verb to be used, around the status of the Earth. Some dose of nostalgia of a golden age edges into yearning in La Tempête ou la voix du vent, not as much as it would if the swinging were to be somber or dark, though. In his manifestation of the disquieting state of the planet, he is gentle.

The result is a full rounded artistic laboratoire to delve into the essence of the “tempest“ which is indeed not a climatic event, yet a state, an emotion of the earth; in the Amerindian culture of the kogis, in Colombia, the shikwa is the invisible cord wrapping up the earth, connecting it with the sun and the rest of the universe, and granting its constant rotation.

Maintaining this balance is no longer the issue at stake, it is more of an earthquake of a sort, un craquement – that is now threatening the balance. Indeed, a tempest. As such, the plot gives a voice to the earth, to express this sentiment, and to give a chance of redemption to mankind for what has been done to the planet and the environment.

`Caliban! Thou earth, thou! Speak.`
This line cracks this interpretation to the core, yet not in a manifest way. The ecological meaning of the line is imaginative and kind, following the plot in the land of comedy aided by fragments of diverse creative devices of the visual theatre: masks, puppets, lights, music.

In the directors` intentions, the shipwrecked are confronted with a “new world“, yet the major themes of forgiveness, justice, freedom manifest in segments interlacing respectively with the beauty of “humanity“, the uselessness of power, and the clumsiness of violence.

Way before the hermeneutics, are the actors, though, entering the stage from the hall, a happy crew, at the TKM – Qui veut dire quoi? Théâtre Kléber–Mèleau.
A placid elderly storyteller more than a tyrannical wizard, Prospero lulls Miranda asleep with star-dust while summoning a Puck-like Ariel whose weapon is a musical chuckle, more than thunder.

Exotic flowers and a surreal vegetation suggest the island is more of a forest – a green space where some would venture to face change, or redemption; and “the-sleep-per-chance-to-dream“ backdrop is indeed ventured aloud by the entering parade, swinging the pendulum in the adjacency of A Midsummer Night`s Dream.

Ferdinand is a sweet goofball who cannot see the surrounding puppet creatures, while Caliban does and he would not mind reign over them, now that he knows the language of domination, but is powerlessly taken for a fish and spoken to in Portuguese by Stefano and Trinculo. Mirrored elsewhere, the Neapolitan court plots without shame chased by an invisible swarm of buzzing insects.

Change indeed happens, in Gonzalo`s voice, wishing a republic with no magistrates, no contracts, no masters, no matrimonies and a whole producing Nature: `We have been wandering in a maze!`. All is forgiven, free, human.

The recipe is rather common these days. An artistic director — here Jan Vandenhouwe of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, a wish list that includes Prokofiev`s Romeo and Juliet, an orchestra — conducted by a leading ballet specialist, here Gavin Sutherland, a corps de ballet to set, or keep, in motion, and a ballet star called upon to activate, or re-activate, the movement machine — here Marcos Morau, founder of La Veronal and artist in residence at Nederlands Dans Theater and Zürich Ballet, as well as already a “creator for“ the Staatsballett Berlin. Add the masters of their respective liminal fields — set design, dramaturgy, lighting and costumes — here respectively Max Glaenzel, Roberto Fratini Serafide together with Koen Bollen, Silvia Bernat Jansà and Silvia Delagneau, and there it is: the monumental production of Romeo + Julia.

Like all algorithms, however, the glitch lies in wait; from the “psycho-architectural“ — where the balcony of the otherwise impressive Concertgebouw Brugge complex proves not to be vertigo-proof, (and I am indeed speaking from experience here!), to the “symbolic-partitural“ — where orchestra and corps de ballet prove not to be monumentality-proof. After a spectacular entrance procession over an electronic vibrato, made of figures in black and gray costumes, an armoured horse, a tension toward the white stained-glass of a church or cathedral (somewhere halfway between a haute couture runway and a painterly backdrop of some Flemish primitive), Prokofiev`s arrival from the orchestra pit produces a fracture that seems not structural, but accidental. Bodies and notes appear to enter, not of their own will, into two dystonic dimensions. Performers, — for they are neither dancers nor actors, and instrumentalists, unseen and unheard to each other, end up not telling the same story.

The sole, extraordinary exception (which perhaps confirms the accidental nature of an evening not quite in tune?), a very brief organic moment — over one of the many “dances of the knights“, when what-could-have-been gives itself to be glimpsed beyond what-actually-was, at the algorithmic heart of the perfect performative formula. Which, on the other hand, suggests that perhaps — “a-syntonic“ incident aside, each ingredient-element of the recipe-formula simply does not lodge within the other. And it is perhaps no coincidence that the production finds it almost called for, to rush to the aid of the readers of this “un-score“ — much as the front-of-house staff rushed to assist me with my vertigo attack! — with a glossary of Morau`s applied symbolism.

The concept of the star-choreographer remains, however, deeply compelling: two children enter and exit the circular stage, real as well as metaphorical figures attempting to play; in the boundless circle, Evil seems to dwell, embodied by a quasi-diabolical director of the dis-order. Their visible protector is a guardian angel of almost certainly superior rank, a sword-bearing warrior who seems to recall Hamlet; he defends them from this carnival of chaos which, in Morau`s stylistic choices, distils the most important tragic element of the Shakespearean original: the ferocious hatred between the two families. A resentment that is here far more than a series of street-corner bagatelles in Verona: it is a procession of global, metaphorical, almost “Heiner-Müllerian“ discontent. A `Romeo-Machine` lamenting a world stripped of all compassion, which humanity is “processionally“ bequeathing to its young.

This is where the glossary becomes indispensable: the circle as a sign of the circus, as in the arena of a bestial paralysis; the horse as the totemic herald of a bellicose-belligerent anthropology; the ritual fire inside one of the rare scenes not in black and white but in black and yellow, symbolising something as uncontrollable as love — which is, however, no longer a trope in this “non-plot“, replaced by couplings devoid of all sensuality; the candles, as if anticipating the mourning to come; the tournament, or the giostra — simulating war games in a second chromatic moment, in black and red this time, and the final mud of the funerals — harrowing — which open the stage floor like clods of earth ready to receive back the two young lovers.

Equally necessary seem to be the uncomfortable, almost irritating contortions Morau imposes on his performers, each one for each, with no assigned parts (no one is Romeo and no one is Juliet, but all are Romeo and Juliet). That gesture of the head tilted to the left, the laughter following the cortège`s progress, sliding gradually from jovial to mad. The costumes fill these distortions well, and define darkness as the new black of a “tourist-cultural“, but above all, fashionable — aesthetics. Up to a point when the eye seems, at a given moment, to see tall white collars even where there are none.

So yes, the children are watching us, I bambini ci guardano — as per De Sica`s citation present in the programme, and we are watching the children. Defended into madness, yet safe.

Or, in a closing Shakespearean cast:
All the world is chaos
And all the boys and girls are merely — hopeless, spectators